FERPA and You

For those of you who don't work in Higher Education, you've probably never even heard of FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. But, if you're a sports fan, you have been impacted by it's reach, at least according to the Columbus Dispatch.

The law, intended to keep student's personal matters private, limits the circumstances under which an institution can release information about that student. It also places parameters on who this information can be released to.

So where do you come in? There's concern that this is being used by Athletic Departments to thwart investigations into their practices and into the choices/actions of the student athletes at major programs.

The whole article is worth a read- to ensure that I"m not being to homerific, here's the link to two sub-articles about tOSU: Violations and Processes. Seems like they do a better job than most at self reporting the things that do happen, even if they tend to side with the student privacy end of the spectrum.

As a side note- Ohio State has the largest athletic department in the country, offering twice as many sports as most other institutes. With the labyrinthine and ridiculous amount of NCAA guidelines, violations are going to happen. The issues are: 1) repeated mistakes and 2) failure to respond.

Along those lines, there were a great series of articles in the LA Times regarding the U$C/Bu$h situation that we've covered before. Give it a read: USC Stays Silent and The Silence is Deafening

Again, when issues come up do you respond proactively or close ranks and play defense? Seems that the Trojans have chosen the latter...